Archive for August, 2005

Yesterday we were invited to our friend Andreas for dinner. I always bake something when we visit him, and this time I decided to bake a plum pie to be served with almond cream, which in this case is whipped cream with carmelized almond. The pie was delicious, even though the plums that I bought weren’t perfect. Next time (and there definitely will be a next time for this pie) I’ll maybe substitute the plums with cherries or some other tart fruit. The pie filling consists of almond paste, eggs and butter which is a great combination.

For dinner Andreas made us a lovely salmon dish which is easy to make and is really great. The dish consists of salmon, leek, grated horseradish and boiled new potatoes. Put all the ingredients in an aluminium foil package that you put on the grill. As the weather was bad yesterday the fish package was put in the oven instead. The result was a delicious and easy fish dish that I truly recommend. For variation you can add some cream or white wine in the fish package. Andreas made a big one, but you can do small individual ones as well. For dessert we had the earlier meantioned plum pie and after the dinner Andreas started with his spooky drinks, that most of the time are delicious but sometimes can be horrible…

First he made some blue drink that we only had a gulp of before we sentenced it to the kitchen sink. Next up was Spillolja (“Oil spill”)… Does that sound like something that you would voluntarily drink? No, I don’t think so… But actually it was quite nice; Coca Cola, Blue Curacao and Cream. Except for the fact that the drink separates really bad…

The oil spill drink.

It looks just like… oil spill…or something worse, just take a look at the above photo. Andreas has actually worked as a bartender and when he ordered this drink on a night out with us last summer, the waiter didn’t think that we would actually drink it as it looks terrible. At least this time we didn’t drink “Monkey Brain” that consists of Sambuca, Campari and Baileys which clash and get the look of… yes monkey brain… Instead of Monkey Brain, Andreas invented a new drink yesterday called “The immigrant” containing banana liqueur and swedish nyponsoppa (rose hip soup), actually rather nice tasting.
We had a great time and we even played or actually sang the karaoke game Singstar (for PS2). Singstar is a funny party game, especially if you like to sing (but who doesn’t after some blue drinks?).

Combine the ingredients for the dough and roll it out. Press the dough over the bottom and sides of a tart pan. Place the pan in the fridge for 1 hour. Heat the oven to 200 °C and bake the crust for about 10 minutes.

Divide the plums into halves and remove the plum stones. Grate the almond paste and combine with the butter. Add an egg at a time and blend. Add the flour. Pour the filling into the crust and add the plum halves. Bake in the bottom part of the oven for about 30 minutes or until the filling becomes golden.

Roast the almonds either in the oven or in a dry frying pan, put aside. Melt sugar and lemon juice in a frying pan. Add the almonds when the sugar is golden. Blend the almonds until all of them are covered with caramel. Add butter and blend. The butter makes the almonds to separate easier from each other. Let the almonds cool.

Chop the almonds and whip the cream. Combine the whipped cream with the almonds. Put some icing sugar on the pie and serve it lukewarm with the almond cream.

Swedish plättar are basically pancakes, but small ones. We use a special pancake pan, called plättlagg. It looks just like the picture to the left (taken from Scandinavian South as I don’t have any of my own). But what I do have is an electric one, to be placed on the kitchen table so everyone can help out and have a fun time while frying plättar. I really dislike frying pancakes or plättar all by myself at the stove. With my “electric frying machine” (I have to admit that I don’t now what it’s called) it’s much more fun and the pancake frying becomes a social event.

Plättar (for 2 persons)

2 eggs
200 ml flour
400 ml milk
a pinch of salt
a pinch of sugar

Beat the eggs and add the flour and milk gradually along with the sugar and salt. Fill each indentation on the plättlagg or the electric one with batter. Cook until golden brown. Eat, fry, talk and be social if using the electric frying machine, otherwise stand alone at the stove and feel like a pancake slave… :-) Serve the plättar with jam.

Today when Fredrik went to the store for some fresh bread and a newspaper for breakfast, he checked our mailbox that is in the house entry and found a dispatch note from the post office. He immiately knew that it was the parcel from Euro Blogging By Post 1 that I was expecting. When he went to the post office to get it, they told him that they hadn’t recieved the parcel from the main post office yet and asked him to come back in an hour. So we had a nice breakfast even though I was extremely

curious and then we went for the parcel together. When I finally got the parcel I was very excited and on our way back home we tried to guess what could be inside the parcel that we saw was sent from London.

The lovely parcel was from Jenni at Pertelote and I have to admit that I had never read her food blog before… Shame on me, but at least I nowadays have a new nice food blog to read! It was very exciting to open the parcel and it was a nice surprise. The first gift was a cute cookie package with a red and golden ribbon that contained home baked cookies!!!

The cookies are Anise-flavoured from an Aldeburgh Cookery School recipe. The spicy vegan cookies smell incredible nice and taste delicious (I’ve never tasted vegan cookies before, but they are really good) . She also included a recipe of the cookies, and a little can with Anise so that I can bake them myself!

I also got dried Strawberries which were very nice and sweet, maybe I can use them in a cake or just eat them as they are… :-)In the parcel there was also a cute pink book called “The Etiquette of English Puddings – Fine and Delicious Recipes”. I will definately try some of the recipes!

“Better have some of a puddingthan none of a pie!”(The Etiquette of English Puddings)

I really enjoyed my parcel, thank you so much Jenni for your generousity and effort! And thanks to Andrew at Spittoon for hosting this great event, on this page you can read the round-up (that is being updated continuously as the participants writes about their received parcels).

All the contents in the wonderful food parcel from Jenni.

I will participate in the next round as well as it was really funny and exiting. The blogging by post event is a lovely way of sharing favourite, personal or local food and getting to know other food bloggers. I just hope that the poor (?!) receiver of my parcel will enjoy the Swedish delicacies that I have sent… :-) Here to the right you can see my parcel that was sent a few days ago and is on it’s way to a Euro Blogging By Post participant, maybe to you? :-) I almost got a shock at the post office though, the dispatch costed me 205 SEK (about $27 or £15)!!! But I don’t mind, the most important is to have fun and to share internationally, this event isn’t about money.

Food Links

Misc.

Search

A cat in the kitchen is proudly powered by
WordPressCopyright 2005 - 2006 A Cat in the Kitchen
All photos were taken by Dagmar T. and are property of her if nothing else is mentioned.
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
23 queries. 0.620 seconds.